TV tropes ain’t so bad — er, right?

Thanks to Monday’s post on Let the Words Flow, I’ve been having a ball (interrupted by minor panic attacks and interspersed with fits of laughter) with tvtropes.org.

Sort of like clichés, a trope is a common (or even overused) theme or device.  If you think your story is original, guess again.  Take a gander at tvtropes.org, and I bet you’ll be singing a new tune.  You’ll also be laughing since it’s just so gosh-darn snarky.

Heck, I thought The Spirit-Hunters was pretty unique, but I was way wrong.  Check it out:

My heroine is sort of a Rebellious Princess mixed in with some Plucky Girl.  She joins forces with a Badass Crew, and there’s some romance with a Stoic/Jerkass Woobie.

My villain is most assuredly an Evil Sorcerer while there is definitely a character with Lich-like aspects in there too.  Of course, there are many, many Type V Zombies who make up a Keystone Army (sort of) and are kinda Made of Plasticine with Vein O Vision.  Oh, and there are some Ghosts floating around.

My plot? Driving Question mixed with the Quest, plus a dash of Zombie Apocalypse thrown in.  The heroine faces some Scylla and Charybdis along the way, and she definitely follows the Hero’s Journey.

Have I overwhelmed you enough? I sure overwhelmed myself!  While I know that being original is hard, I don’t think I ever realized it was so impossible!

However, don’t be discouraged.  Like I’ve said before,

there are no new stories, only new ways of telling them.

It’s our job to tell the story we want to tell — unique or not — and to infuse it with the one thing no one can copy: ourselves.

So what about your WIP?  What tropes fill it?  Be warned — if you start scanning tvtropes.org now, your life will stop for (at least) a few hours.  Mine just did…

-S.